1.
Holy Trinity Column in Olomouc
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The Holy Trinity Column in Olomouc is a Baroque monument in the Czech Republic built from 1716 to 1754. The main purpose was to celebrate the Catholic Church and faith, partly caused by feeling of gratitude for ending a plague and it is the biggest Baroque sculptural group in the Czech Republic. In 2000 it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List as one of the most exceptional examples of the apogee of central European Baroque artistic expression. According to the ICOMOS evaluation of this patrimony, the erection of Marian columns on town squares is an exclusively Baroque, post-Tridentine and its iconographic basis lies in the Book of Revelation. The basic model is thought to have been the column in the Piazza Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome and this monument for Olomouc was the culmination of work of several artists and master craftsmen, but it did not bring much fortune to them. The first to die during the work was Wenzel Render, a monumental mason and he came first with the idea to build the column, enforced his will upon the city council, designed it, built the first stage and helped to finance it. His followers Franz Thoneck, Johann Wenzel Rokický and Augustin Scholtz also did not live enough to see the column finished. The sculptural decoration was started by Phillip Sattler, after his death Andreas Zahner continued and made 18 sculptures and 9 reliefs in 7 years before he died as well. Goldsmith Simon Forstner, who made gilded copper sculptures of the Holy Trinity and of the Assumption of the Virgin, was somewhat luckier, however he lost his health when working on the sculptures and using toxic mercury compounds during the gilding process. After the Holy Trinity Column was finished in 1754, it became a source of pride for Olomouc. The column was consecrated in a celebration attended by Empress Maria Theresa. General James Keith complied with their wishes, the column was repaired soon after the war and a replica of a stone shot was half-buried in its stem on the place where it was hit to remind people of this event. The column is dominated by gilded copper sculptures of the Holy Trinity accompanied by the Archangel Gabriel on the top, the base of the column, in three levels, is surrounded by 18 more stone sculptures of saints and 14 reliefs in elaborate cartouches. Three reliefs represent the Three theological virtues Faith, Hope, and his sculpture showed that Olomouc was very proud of its university. Reliefs of all twelve apostles are placed among these sculptures, the last missing in this list of saints is St. John Sarkander, whose statue is on the second stage. John Sarkander was a priest who was tortured to death in Olomouc prison in the beginning of the Thirty Years War, because he, as the legend says, refused to break the seal of confession. The decision to him here violated the tradition, since Sarkander had not been canonized and not even beatified in that time yet. However, his following was so strong here that the craftsmen decided to take the risk, Sarkander was beatified in 1859 and canonized in 1995 on the occasion of the visit of Pope John Paul II in Olomouc
2.
Astronomical clock
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The term is loosely used to refer to any clock that shows, in addition to the time of day, astronomical information. The term should not be confused with astronomical regulator, a high precision, Astronomical clocks usually represent the solar system using the geocentric model. The center of the dial is marked with a disc or sphere representing the earth. The sun is represented by a golden sphere, shown rotating around the earth once a day around a 24-hour analog dial. This view accords both with daily experience and with the world view of pre-Copernican Europe. Research in 2011 and 2012 led a group of researchers to posit that European astronomical clocks are descended from the technology of the Antikythera mechanism. In the 11th century, the Song Dynasty Chinese horologist, mechanical engineer, Su Song is noted for having incorporated an escapement mechanism and earliest known endless power-transmitting chain drive for his clock-tower and armillary sphere to function. They no longer exist, but detailed descriptions of their design and construction survive, wallingfords clock may have shown the sun, moon, stars and planets, and had, in addition, a wheel of fortune and an indicator of the state of the tide at London Bridge. De Dondis clock was a construction with 107 moving parts, showing the positions of the sun, moon. Both these clocks, and others like them, were less accurate than their designers would have wished. The gear ratios may have been calculated, but their manufacture was somewhat beyond the mechanical abilities of the time. Astronomical clocks were built as demonstration or exhibition pieces, to impress as much as to educate or inform, the challenge of building these masterpieces meant that clockmakers would continue to produce them, to demonstrate their technical skill and their patrons wealth. The philosophical message of an ordered, heavenly-ordained universe, which accorded with the Gothic era view of the world, the Science Museum has a scale model of the Cosmic Engine, which Su Sung, a Chinese polymath, designed and constructed in China in 1092. A full-sized working replica of Su Sungs clock exists in the Republic of China s National Museum of Natural Science and this full-scale, fully functional replica, approximately 12 meters in height, was constructed from Su Sungs original descriptions and mechanical drawings. The most sophisticated water-powered astronomical clock was Al-Jazaris castle clock, considered to be an example of a programmable analog computer. It was a device that was about 33 meters high. The Strasbourg Cathedral has housed three different astronomical clocks since the 14th century, the first clock was built between 1352 and 1354 and stopped working sometime at the beginning of the 16th century. A second clock was built by Herlin, Conrad Dasypodius, the Habrecht brothers
3.
Czech Republic
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The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, is a nation state in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west, Austria to the south, Slovakia to the east and Poland to the northeast. The Czech Republic covers an area of 78,866 square kilometres with mostly temperate continental climate and it is a unitary parliamentary republic, has 10.5 million inhabitants and the capital and largest city is Prague, with over 1.2 million residents. The Czech Republic includes the territories of Bohemia, Moravia. The Czech state was formed in the late 9th century as the Duchy of Bohemia under the Great Moravian Empire, after the fall of the Empire in 907, the centre of power transferred from Moravia to Bohemia under the Přemyslid dynasty. In 1002, the duchy was formally recognized as part of the Holy Roman Empire, becoming the Kingdom of Bohemia in 1198 and reaching its greatest territorial extent in the 14th century. Following the Battle of Mohács in 1526, the whole Crown of Bohemia was gradually integrated into the Habsburg Monarchy alongside the Archduchy of Austria, the Protestant Bohemian Revolt against the Catholic Habsburgs led to the Thirty Years War. After the Battle of the White Mountain, the Habsburgs consolidated their rule, reimposed Roman Catholicism, the Czech part of Czechoslovakia was occupied by Germany in World War II, and was liberated in 1945 by the armies of the Soviet Union and the United States. The Czech country lost the majority of its German-speaking inhabitants after they were expelled following the war, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia won the 1946 elections. Following the 1948 coup détat, Czechoslovakia became a one-party communist state under Soviet influence, in 1968, increasing dissatisfaction with the regime culminated in a reform movement known as the Prague Spring, which ended in a Soviet-led invasion. Czechoslovakia remained occupied until the 1989 Velvet Revolution, when the communist regime collapsed, on 6 March 1990, the Czech Socialistic Republic was renamed to the Czech Republic. On 1 January 1993, Czechoslovakia peacefully dissolved, with its constituent states becoming the independent states of the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic. The Czech Republic joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004, it is a member of the United Nations, the OECD, the OSCE, and it is a developed country with an advanced, high income economy and high living standards. The UNDP ranks the country 14th in inequality-adjusted human development, the Czech Republic also ranks as the 6th most peaceful country, while achieving strong performance in democratic governance. It has the lowest unemployment rate in the European Union, the traditional English name Bohemia derives from Latin Boiohaemum, which means home of the Boii. The current name comes from the endonym Čech, spelled Cžech until the reform in 1842. The name comes from the Slavic tribe and, according to legend, their leader Čech, the etymology of the word Čech can be traced back to the Proto-Slavic root *čel-, meaning member of the people, kinsman, thus making it cognate to the Czech word člověk. The country has traditionally divided into three lands, namely Bohemia in the west, Moravia in the southeast, and Czech Silesia in the northeast. Following the dissolution of Czechoslovakia at the end of 1992, the Czech part of the former nation found itself without a common single-word geographical name in English, the name Czechia /ˈtʃɛkiə/ was recommended by the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs
4.
Olomouc Region
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It is named for its capital Olomouc. Olomouc region borders with the Moravian-Silesian Region, Zlín Region, South Moravian Region, furthermore, the region shares a 104 km long border with Poland. In September 2013 the population of the Olomouc Region totalled 636,585 inhabitants, as of 2012,56. 6% of region’s population lived in towns or cities. Out of 399 municipalities located in the region,30 had a status of town, region’s capital Olomouc is with approximately 100 thousand inhabitants the largest city. With 121.3 inhabitants per square kilometre the region was close to the average of 133.2 persons per km2. There were, of course, differences within the region, the lowest population density was in the Jeseník District, in the long term, the population of the region has been aging. The share of children aged 0–14 has been decreasing, while the proportion of those aged 65+ has been increasing, the table below provides the list of regions most populous cities and town as of 31 December 2012. The total area of the Region amounted to 5,266 km2, the northern part of the region is of a mountainous nature. The Jeseníky mountains are located here, including Praděd which is the highest point of the region, the southern part of the Region consists of the Hanakian lowland. The lowest point of the region is situated on the level of the Morava River near to Kojetín in the Přerov District. The Morava river flows through the region and the majority of the territory belongs to Morava’s drainage basin. A small northern part of the region belongs to the basin of Odra River which flows to the Baltic Sea. The Olomouc Region offers a variety of natural points of interest. Protected landscape area of the Jeseníky mountains offers a number of places such as with the largest Moravian peatbog Rejvíz. Another scenic place is Dlouhé Stráně water reservoir situated on the top of a hill, protected landscape area Litovelské Pomoraví offers floodplain forests with many endangered kinds of plants and animals. Finally, many caves can be found in the region, Javoříčko Caves, Mladeč Caves, the Regions economy focuses on traditional agriculture, processing industry and services. Conditions for further development of the Region are its suitable position, transport accessibility, developed infrastructure, enough qualified labour force and entry of foreign investors. In 2011 the total economically active population of the Olomouc Region was 307.2 thousand people, the unemployment rate in late 2013 was 9%
5.
Districts of the Czech Republic
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In 1960, Czechoslovakia was re-divided into districts often without regard to traditional division and local relationships. In the area of the Czech Republic, there were 75 districts, a reform in effect since January 2003 replaced the districts with 204 Municipalities with Extended Competence (obce s rozšířenou působností, also obce III. Stupně - third-level municipalities, unofficially also called little districts which took over most of the administration of the district authorities. Some of these are divided between Municipalities with Commissioned Local Authority. The old districts still exist as units and remain as seats of some of the offices, especially courts, police. In 2007 the borders of the districts were slightly adjusted and 119 municipalities are now within different districts, regions of the Czech Republic ISO 3166-2, CZ http, //www. czso. cz/lexikon/mos2003. nsf/index
6.
Morava (river)
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The Morava is a river in Central Europe, a left tributary of the Danube. It is the river of Moravia, which derives its name from it. The river originates on the Králický Sněžník mountain in the corner of Pardubice Region. The lower part of the rivers course forms the border between the Czech Republic and Slovakia and then between Austria and Slovakia, the latter three are actually continuous parts of one large basin, forming the major part of the Vienna Basin. In the Czech Republic, there are some larger towns lying upon Morava, particularly Olomouc, Kroměříž, Otrokovice, Uherské Hradiště and Hodonín. After 354 km of its course, Morava feeds the Danube by a discharge rate of 120 m3/s. The Morava river is unusual in that it is a European blackwater river, the rivers longest tributary is Thaya or Dyje, flowing in at the tripoint of Austria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The biggest tributary from the left is Bečva, though the German name March may refer to Mark, border, frontier, the rivers name more probably is derived from Proto-Indo-European *mori, waters. It was first documented as Maraha in an 892 deed, at the times of the Cold War, this section of the river was part of the Iron curtain, being the frontier between Austria and Czechoslovakia. In July 1997, the Morava basin was affected by heavy stratiform raining, in the Czech Republic,49 people lost their life, more than 250 villages had to be evacuated and the total damage cost 63 milliard crowns. March of Austria March of Moravia Geographic data related to Morava at OpenStreetMap
7.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
8.
Czech Social Democratic Party
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The Czech Social Democratic Party is a social-democratic political party in the Czech Republic. It holds 50 seats in the Chamber of Deputies, making it the largest party, ČSSD leads the governing Cabinet of the Czech Republic since 2013. The Social Democratic Czechoslavonic party in Austria was founded on 7 April 1878 in Austria-Hungary representing the Kingdom of Bohemia in the Austrian parliament and its role in the political life of the empire was one of the factors that lead to the creation of independent Czechoslovak Republic. After the collapse of Austria-Hungary, the party one of the leading parties of the first Czechoslovak Republic. After the re-establishment of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1945, the party returned to its pre-existing structure, in 1948, after the Communist Party assumed the parliamentary majority, the Czech Social Democratic Party was incorporated into Communist Party. Under the reformist environment in 1968, there were talks about allowing the recreation of a Social Democratic party and it was only after the Velvet Revolution in 1989, when the party was recreated. After the 1998 parliamentary election, the party won the most seats, as a result, the party formed a minority government under party leader Miloš Zeman. With only 74 seats out of 200, the government had the confidence and supply from the Civic Democratic Party, the party won the elections of 2002 with 70 of 200 representatives in the Chamber of Deputies of the Czech Republic. The chairman of the party in years 2006-2010 was Jiří Paroubek and his predecessor was Stanislav Gross from 26 June 2004 to 26 April 2005. Gross resigned after a scandal which arose due to his inability to explain the source of resources used to pay for his home. Grosss predecessor Vladimír Špidla was forced to resign in 2004 after the ČSSD lost in the 2004 European Parliamentary elections, in the June 2 and 3,2006 elections, the party won 32. 3% of the vote and 74 out of 200 seats. The election at first caused a stalemate since the centre-right parties, hence the ČSSD went into opposition. Following the 2010 legislative elections, the ČSSD gained 22, the Chairman of ČSSD Bohuslav Sobotka has become the new Prime Minister of the Czech Republic. In economic matters, the party platform is typical of Western European social democratic parties. It supports a mixed economy, a welfare state. The party was a member of the Labour and Socialist International between 1923 and 1938, after the splitup of Austria-Hungary, the Czechoslovak Social Democratic Workers Party in the Republic of Austria split from the main party. Official website Party basic data in English
9.
World Heritage Site
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A World Heritage Site is a landmark which has been officially recognized by the United Nations, specifically by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Sites are selected on the basis of having cultural, historical, scientific or some form of significance. UNESCO regards these sites as being important to the interests of humanity. The programme catalogues, names, and conserves sites of outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common culture, under certain conditions, listed sites can obtain funds from the World Heritage Fund. The program was founded with the Convention Concerning the Protection of the Worlds Cultural and Natural Heritage, since then,192 state parties have ratified the convention, making it one of the most adhered to international instruments. As of July 2016,1052 sites are listed,814 cultural,203 natural, in 1959, the governments of Egypt and Sudan requested UNESCO to assist their countries to protect and rescue the endangered monuments and sites. In 1960, the Director-General of UNESCO launched an appeal to the Member States for an International Campaign to Save the Monuments of Nubia, the campaign, which ended in 1980, was considered a success. The project cost $80 million, about $40 million of which was collected from 50 countries, the projects success led to other safeguarding campaigns, saving Venice and its lagoon in Italy, the ruins of Mohenjo-daro in Pakistan, and the Borobodur Temple Compounds in Indonesia. UNESCO then initiated, with the International Council on Monuments and Sites, the United States initiated the idea of cultural conservation with nature conservation. The International Union for Conservation of Nature developed similar proposals in 1968, the Convention came into force on 17 December 1975. As of June 2016, it has been ratified by 192 states, including 188 UN member states plus the Cook Islands, the Holy See, Niue, a country must first list its significant cultural and natural sites, the result is called the Tentative List. A country may not nominate sites that have not been first included on the Tentative List, next, it can place sites selected from that list into a Nomination File. The Nomination File is evaluated by the International Council on Monuments and Sites and these bodies then make their recommendations to the World Heritage Committee. There are ten selection criteria – a site must meet at least one of them to be included on the list, up to 2004, there were six criteria for cultural heritage and four criteria for natural heritage. In 2005, this was modified so there is now only one set of ten criteria. Nominated sites must be of outstanding value and meet at least one of the ten criteria. Thus, the Geneva Convention treaty promulgates, Article 53, PROTECTION OF CULTURAL OBJECTS AND OF PLACES OF WORSHIP. There are 1,052 World Heritage Sites located in 165 States Party, of these,814 are cultural,203 are natural and 35 are mixed properties
10.
Moravian dialects
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Moravian dialects are the varieties of Czech spoken in Moravia, a historical region in the southeast of the Czech Republic. There are more forms of the Czech language used in Moravia than in the rest of the Czech Republic, the main four groups of dialects are the Bohemian-Moravian group, the Central Moravian group, the Eastern Moravian group and the Lach group. While the forms are generally viewed as regional variants of Czech, southeastern Moravian dialects form a dialect continuum with the closely related Slovak language, and are thus sometimes viewed as dialects of Slovak rather than Czech. Until the 19th century, the used in Slavic-speaking areas of Moravia was referred to as “Moravian” or as “Czech”. Respondents who chose Bohemian–Moravian–Slovak as their main communicating language were counted in the Austrian censuses as Czechs, on the occasion of 2011 Census of the Czech Republic, several Moravian organizations led a campaign to promote the Moravian nationality and language. According to the results of the census, there was a number of 108,469 native speakers of Moravian in 2011. Of them,62,908 consider Moravian to be their native language. While the former regional dialects of Bohemia have merged into one interdialect, Common Czech, the most common classification distinguishes three major groups of Moravian dialects, Central Moravian, Eastern Moravian and Silesian. Features of this group include A prevalence of the e and é in place of i/y, í/ý. O and ó in place of u and ou, respectively, by extension, the third person plural ending of verbs which would be -í in standard Czech, and -ej or -ou in Common Czech, is -ijó, or sometimes just -ó in Central Moravian. The instrumental ending -í is also replaced by -ó, the ending -a instead of -e for feminine nouns and possessive adjectives is retained, as in Slovak. The verb “to be” has the 1st person singular present tense form su rather than jsem, in contrast to Common Czech, the -l on past tense verbs is always retained. The dialects spoken in and around Brno have seen a lot of influence from Hantec slang. The Hanakian dialect has a literary presence, writers who have written in Hanakian dialect include Alois and Vilém Mrštík, Ondřej Přikryl and Jakub Obrovský. Written Hanakian dialect often distinguishes between wide or open ê and ô, and closed e and o, to reflect dialects which pronounce these two sounds differently, bêl jednó jeden člověk tôze chôdobné na sfětě. Narodil se mô chlapeček, ale nigdo nechtěl mô jiť za kmotra, že bêl tôze chôdobné. “ Šil a potkal smrť, ale nevěděl, co to je za osobô, bêla pěkná ženská, jako iná ženská. Ona se nevêmlóvala a hneď ho přêvitala kmôcháčkem, vzala chlapca na rôkê a nesla ho do kostela, Czech translation, Byl jednou na světě jeden velmi chudý člověk. Narodil se mu chlapeček, ale nikdo mu nechtěl jít za kmotra, protože byl velmi chudý. “ Šel a potkal smrt, ale nevěděl, co je to za osobu, byla to pěkná žena, požádal ji, aby šla za kmotru
11.
German language
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German is a West Germanic language that is mainly spoken in Central Europe. It is the most widely spoken and official language in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, South Tyrol, the German-speaking Community of Belgium and it is also one of the three official languages of Luxembourg. Major languages which are most similar to German include other members of the West Germanic language branch, such as Afrikaans, Dutch, English, Luxembourgish and it is the second most widely spoken Germanic language, after English. One of the languages of the world, German is the first language of about 95 million people worldwide. The German speaking countries are ranked fifth in terms of publication of new books. German derives most of its vocabulary from the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, a portion of German words are derived from Latin and Greek, and fewer are borrowed from French and English. With slightly different standardized variants, German is a pluricentric language, like English, German is also notable for its broad spectrum of dialects, with many unique varieties existing in Europe and also other parts of the world. The history of the German language begins with the High German consonant shift during the migration period, when Martin Luther translated the Bible, he based his translation primarily on the standard bureaucratic language used in Saxony, also known as Meißner Deutsch. Copies of Luthers Bible featured a long list of glosses for each region that translated words which were unknown in the region into the regional dialect. Roman Catholics initially rejected Luthers translation, and tried to create their own Catholic standard of the German language – the difference in relation to Protestant German was minimal. It was not until the middle of the 18th century that a widely accepted standard was created, until about 1800, standard German was mainly a written language, in urban northern Germany, the local Low German dialects were spoken. Standard German, which was different, was often learned as a foreign language with uncertain pronunciation. Northern German pronunciation was considered the standard in prescriptive pronunciation guides though, however, German was the language of commerce and government in the Habsburg Empire, which encompassed a large area of Central and Eastern Europe. Until the mid-19th century, it was essentially the language of townspeople throughout most of the Empire and its use indicated that the speaker was a merchant or someone from an urban area, regardless of nationality. Some cities, such as Prague and Budapest, were gradually Germanized in the years after their incorporation into the Habsburg domain, others, such as Pozsony, were originally settled during the Habsburg period, and were primarily German at that time. Prague, Budapest and Bratislava as well as cities like Zagreb, the most comprehensive guide to the vocabulary of the German language is found within the Deutsches Wörterbuch. This dictionary was created by the Brothers Grimm and is composed of 16 parts which were issued between 1852 and 1860, in 1872, grammatical and orthographic rules first appeared in the Duden Handbook. In 1901, the 2nd Orthographical Conference ended with a standardization of the German language in its written form
12.
Latin
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Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets, Latin was originally spoken in Latium, in the Italian Peninsula. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language, Vulgar Latin developed into the Romance languages, such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Romanian. Latin, Italian and French have contributed many words to the English language, Latin and Ancient Greek roots are used in theology, biology, and medicine. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had been standardised into Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken during the same time and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence. Late Latin is the language from the 3rd century. Later, Early Modern Latin and Modern Latin evolved, Latin was used as the language of international communication, scholarship, and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernaculars. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Today, many students, scholars and members of the Catholic clergy speak Latin fluently and it is taught in primary, secondary and postsecondary educational institutions around the world. The language has been passed down through various forms, some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same, volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance, the reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy. The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part and they are in part the subject matter of the field of classics. The Cat in the Hat, and a book of fairy tales, additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissners Latin Phrasebook. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed inkhorn terms, as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch, Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole
13.
Polish language
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Polish is a West Slavic language spoken primarily in Poland and is the native language of the Poles. It belongs to the Lechitic subgroup of the West Slavic languages, Polish is the official language of Poland, but it is also used throughout the world by Polish minorities in other countries. It is one of the languages of the European Union. Its written standard is the Polish alphabet, which has 9 additions to the letters of the basic Latin script, Polish is closely related to Kashubian, Silesian, Upper Sorbian, Lower Sorbian, Czech and Slovak. It is also the second most widely spoken Slavic language, after Russian, in history, Polish is known to be an important language, both diplomatically and academically in Central and Eastern Europe. Today, Polish is spoken by over 38.5 million people as their first language in Poland. It is also spoken as a language in western parts of Belarus and Ukraine, west and central Lithuania, as well as the northern parts of the Czech Republic. There are 55 million Polish language speakers around the world, Polish began to emerge as a distinct language around the 10th century, the process largely triggered by the establishment and development of the Polish state. With Christianity, Poland also adopted the Latin alphabet, which made it possible to write down Polish, the precursor to modern Polish is the Old Polish language. Ultimately, Polish is thought to descend from the unattested Proto-Slavic language, Poland is the most linguistically homogeneous European country, nearly 97% of Polands citizens declare Polish as their first language. Elsewhere, Poles constitute large minorities in Lithuania, Belarus, Polish is the most widely used minority language in Lithuanias Vilnius County and is found elsewhere in southeastern Lithuania. There are significant numbers of Polish speakers among Polish emigrants and their descendants in many other countries, in the United States, Polish Americans number more than 11 million but most of them cannot speak Polish fluently. The largest concentrations of Polish speakers reported in the census were found in three states, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey. Enough people in these areas speak Polish that PNC Financial Services offer services available in Polish at all of their machines in addition to English and Spanish. According to the 2011 census there are now over 500,000 people in England, in Canada, there is a significant Polish Canadian population, There are 242,885 speakers of Polish according to the 2006 census, with a particular concentration in Toronto and Montreal. The geographical distribution of the Polish language was affected by the territorial changes of Poland immediately after World War II. Poles settled in the Recovered Territories in the west and north and this tendency toward a homogeneity also stems from the vertically integrated nature of the authoritarian Polish Peoples Republic. The inhabitants of different regions of Poland still speak standard Polish somewhat differently, first-language speakers of Polish have no trouble understanding each other, and non-native speakers may have difficulty distinguishing regional variations
14.
Hungarian language
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Hungarian is the official language of Hungary and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Outside Hungary it is spoken by communities of Hungarian people in neighbouring countries. Like Finnish and Estonian, it belongs to the Uralic language family, its closest relatives being Mansi and it is one of several European languages not part of the Indo-European languages, and the most widely-spoken European language that does not belong to the Indo-European family. The Hungarian name for the language is magyar or magyar nyelv, the word Magyar is used as an English and Hungarian word to refer to Hungarian people as an ethnic group. Hungarian is a member of the Uralic language family, the name of Hungary could be a result of regular sound changes of Ungrian/Ugrian, and the fact that the Eastern Slavs referred to Hungarians as Ǫgry/Ǫgrove seemed to confirm that. Current literature favors the hypothesis that it comes from the name of the Turkic tribe Onogur, there are numerous regular sound correspondences between Hungarian and the other Ugric languages. For example, Hungarian /aː/ corresponds to Khanty /o/ in certain positions, for example, Hungarian ház house vs. Khanty xot house, and Hungarian száz hundred vs. Khanty sot hundred. The distance between the Ugric and Finnic languages is greater, but the correspondences are also regular, during the later half of the 19th century, a competing hypothesis proposed a Turkic affinity of Hungarian. Following an academic debate known as Az ugor-török háború, the Finno-Ugric hypothesis was concluded the sounder of the two, foremost based on work by the German linguist Josef Budenz. The traditional view argues that the Hungarian language separated from its Ugric relatives in the first half of the 1st millennium b. c. e. in western Siberia, east of the southern Urals. The Hungarians gradually changed their lifestyle from settled hunters to nomadic pastoralists, in Hungarian, Iranian loans date back to the time immediately following the breakup of Ugric and probably span well over a millennium. Among these include tehén ‘cow’, tíz ‘ten’, tej ‘milk’, increasing archaeological evidence from present-day southern Bashkortostan found in the previous decades confirms the existence of Hungarian settlements between the Volga River and Ural Mountains. The Onogurs later had a influence on the language, especially between the 5th-9th centuries. This layer of Turkic loans is large and varied, and includes words borrowed from Oghur Turkic, e. g. borjú ‘calf’, dél ‘noon, many words related to agriculture, to state administration or even to family relations have such backgrounds. Hungarian syntax and grammar were not influenced in a dramatic way during these 300 years. After the arrival of the Hungarians into the Carpathian Basin the language came into contact with different speech communities, Turkic loans from this period come mainly from the Pechenegs and Cumanians who settled in Hungary during the 12th-13th centuries, e. g. koboz ‘cobza’, komondor ‘mop dog’. Hungarian borrowed many words from especially the neighbouring Slavic languages, in exchange, these languages also borrowed words from Hungarian, e. g. Serbo-Croatian ašov from Hung ásó ‘spade’. Approximately 1. 6% of the Romanian lexicon is of Hungarian origin, on the basis of the growing genetic evidence, the accepted origin theory is contested by geneticists too
15.
Moravia
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Moravia is a historical country in the Czech Republic and one of the historical Czech lands, together with Bohemia and Czech Silesia. Moravia has an area of over 22,348.87 km2 and about 3 million inhabitants, the statistics from 1921 states, that the whole area of Moravia including the enclaves in Silesia covers 22,623.41 km2. The people are historically named Moravians, a subgroup of Czechs, the land takes its name from the Morava river, which rises in the northern tip of the region and flows southward to the opposite end, being its major stream. Moravias largest city and historical capital is Brno, however before being sacked by the Swedish army during the Thirty Years War, though officially abolished by an administrative reform in 1949, Moravia is still commonly acknowledged as a specific land in the Czech Republic. Moravian people are aware of their Moravian identity and there is some rivalry between them and the Czechs from Bohemia. Moravia occupies most of the part of the Czech Republic. Moravian territory is naturally strongly determined, in fact, as the Morava river basin, with effect of mountains in the west and partly in the east. Moravia occupies a position in Central Europe. All the highlands in the west and east of part of Europe run west-east. Moravia borders Bohemia in the west, Lower Austria in the south, Slovakia in the southeast, Poland very shortly in the north and its natural boundary is formed by the Sudetes mountains in the north, the Carpathians in the east and the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands in the west. The Thaya river meanders along the border with Austria and the tripoint of Moravia, Austria and Slovakia is at the confluence of the Thaya, the northeast border with Silesia runs partly along the Moravice, Oder and Ostravice rivers. Between 1782–1850, Moravia also included a portion of the former province of Silesia – the Austrian Silesia. Geologically, Moravia covers an area between the Bohemian Massif and the Carpathians, and between the Danube basin and the North European Plain. Its core geomorphological features are three wide vales, namely the Dyje-Svratka Vale, the Upper Morava Vale and the Lower Morava Vale, the former two form the westernmost part of the Subcarpathia, the latter one is the northernmost part of the Vienna Basin. The vales surround the low range of Central Moravian Carpathians, the highest mountains of Moravia are situated on its northern border in Hrubý Jeseník, the highest peak is Praděd. Second highest are the Moravian-Silesian Beskids at the very east, with Smrk, the White Carpathians along the southeastern border rise up to 970 m at Velká Javořina. The spacious, but moderate Bohemian-Moravian Highlands on the west reach 837 m at Devět skal. The fluvial system of Moravia is very cohesive, as the border is similar to the watershed of the Morava river
16.
Larger urban zone
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The larger urban zone, or Functional Urban Area, is a measure of the population and expanse of metropolitan areas in Europe. It consists of a city and its commuting zone, the definition was introduced in 2004 by Eurostat, the statistical agency of the European Union, in agreement with the national statistics offices in the member states. Eurostat data is provided on cities in the EU, its candidate countries, several cities were excluded by definition from the 2004 list of LUZs on technical, definitional grounds, such as the coincidence of the metropolitan area with the urban zone. The LUZ represents an attempt at a definition of the metropolitan area. Eurostats objective was to have an area from which a significant share of the commute into the city. To ensure a good availability, Eurostat adjusts the LUZ boundaries to administrative boundaries that approximate the functional urban region. In 2006 LUZ definitions were changed significantly, improving the comparability of LUZ definitions across different countries and this is a list of larger urban zones. The Urban Audit also includes cities from EFTA countries and EU candidate countries, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development uses a similar definition of Functional Urban Area to represent population sizes of cities in OECD countries. The figures in the Eurostat database are an attempt at a compromise between harmonised data for all of the European Union, and with availability of statistical data and this is a list of larger urban zones by population as of 2004. The 2004 Urban Audit also includes cities from EFTA countries and EU candidate countries, eurostats Urban Audit is about much more than demographics
17.
Ancient Rome
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In its many centuries of existence, the Roman state evolved from a monarchy to a classical republic and then to an increasingly autocratic empire. Through conquest and assimilation, it came to dominate the Mediterranean region and then Western Europe, Asia Minor, North Africa and it is often grouped into classical antiquity together with ancient Greece, and their similar cultures and societies are known as the Greco-Roman world. Ancient Roman civilisation has contributed to modern government, law, politics, engineering, art, literature, architecture, technology, warfare, religion, language and society. Rome professionalised and expanded its military and created a system of government called res publica, the inspiration for modern republics such as the United States and France. By the end of the Republic, Rome had conquered the lands around the Mediterranean and beyond, its domain extended from the Atlantic to Arabia, the Roman Empire emerged with the end of the Republic and the dictatorship of Augustus Caesar. 721 years of Roman-Persian Wars started in 92 BC with their first war against Parthia and it would become the longest conflict in human history, and have major lasting effects and consequences for both empires. Under Trajan, the Empire reached its territorial peak, Republican mores and traditions started to decline during the imperial period, with civil wars becoming a prelude common to the rise of a new emperor. Splinter states, such as the Palmyrene Empire, would divide the Empire during the crisis of the 3rd century. Plagued by internal instability and attacked by various migrating peoples, the part of the empire broke up into independent kingdoms in the 5th century. This splintering is a landmark historians use to divide the ancient period of history from the pre-medieval Dark Ages of Europe. King Numitor was deposed from his throne by his brother, Amulius, while Numitors daughter, Rhea Silvia, because Rhea Silvia was raped and impregnated by Mars, the Roman god of war, the twins were considered half-divine. The new king, Amulius, feared Romulus and Remus would take back the throne, a she-wolf saved and raised them, and when they were old enough, they returned the throne of Alba Longa to Numitor. Romulus became the source of the citys name, in order to attract people to the city, Rome became a sanctuary for the indigent, exiled, and unwanted. This caused a problem for Rome, which had a large workforce but was bereft of women, Romulus traveled to the neighboring towns and tribes and attempted to secure marriage rights, but as Rome was so full of undesirables they all refused. Legend says that the Latins invited the Sabines to a festival and stole their unmarried maidens, leading to the integration of the Latins, after a long time in rough seas, they landed at the banks of the Tiber River. Not long after they landed, the men wanted to take to the sea again, one woman, named Roma, suggested that the women burn the ships out at sea to prevent them from leaving. At first, the men were angry with Roma, but they realized that they were in the ideal place to settle. They named the settlement after the woman who torched their ships, the Roman poet Virgil recounted this legend in his classical epic poem the Aeneid
18.
Roman Empire
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Civil wars and executions continued, culminating in the victory of Octavian, Caesars adopted son, over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the annexation of Egypt. Octavians power was then unassailable and in 27 BC the Roman Senate formally granted him overarching power, the imperial period of Rome lasted approximately 1,500 years compared to the 500 years of the Republican era. The first two centuries of the empires existence were a period of unprecedented political stability and prosperity known as the Pax Romana, following Octavians victory, the size of the empire was dramatically increased. After the assassination of Caligula in 41, the senate briefly considered restoring the republic, under Claudius, the empire invaded Britannia, its first major expansion since Augustus. Vespasian emerged triumphant in 69, establishing the Flavian dynasty, before being succeeded by his son Titus and his short reign was followed by the long reign of his brother Domitian, who was eventually assassinated. The senate then appointed the first of the Five Good Emperors, the empire reached its greatest extent under Trajan, the second in this line. A period of increasing trouble and decline began with the reign of Commodus, Commodus assassination in 192 triggered the Year of the Five Emperors, of which Septimius Severus emerged victorious. The assassination of Alexander Severus in 235 led to the Crisis of the Third Century in which 26 men were declared emperor by the Roman Senate over a time span. It was not until the reign of Diocletian that the empire was fully stabilized with the introduction of the Tetrarchy, which saw four emperors rule the empire at once. This arrangement was unsuccessful, leading to a civil war that was finally ended by Constantine I. Constantine subsequently shifted the capital to Byzantium, which was renamed Constantinople in his honour and it remained the capital of the east until its demise. Constantine also adopted Christianity which later became the state religion of the empire. However, Augustulus was never recognized by his Eastern colleague, and separate rule in the Western part of the empire ceased to exist upon the death of Julius Nepos. The Eastern Roman Empire endured for another millennium, eventually falling to the Ottoman Turks in 1453, the Roman Empire was among the most powerful economic, cultural, political and military forces in the world of its time. It was one of the largest empires in world history, at its height under Trajan, it covered 5 million square kilometres. It held sway over an estimated 70 million people, at that time 21% of the entire population. Throughout the European medieval period, attempts were made to establish successors to the Roman Empire, including the Empire of Romania, a Crusader state. Rome had begun expanding shortly after the founding of the republic in the 6th century BC, then, it was an empire long before it had an emperor
19.
Archaeology
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Archaeology, or archeology, is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, Archaeology can be considered both a social science and a branch of the humanities. In North America, archaeology is considered a sub-field of anthropology, archaeologists study human prehistory and history, from the development of the first stone tools at Lomekwi in East Africa 3.3 million years ago up until recent decades. Archaeology as a field is distinct from the discipline of palaeontology, Archaeology is particularly important for learning about prehistoric societies, for whom there may be no written records to study. Prehistory includes over 99% of the human past, from the Paleolithic until the advent of literacy in societies across the world, Archaeology has various goals, which range from understanding culture history to reconstructing past lifeways to documenting and explaining changes in human societies through time. The discipline involves surveying, excavation and eventually analysis of data collected to learn more about the past, in broad scope, archaeology relies on cross-disciplinary research. Archaeology developed out of antiquarianism in Europe during the 19th century, Archaeology has been used by nation-states to create particular visions of the past. Nonetheless, today, archaeologists face many problems, such as dealing with pseudoarchaeology, the looting of artifacts, a lack of public interest, the science of archaeology grew out of the older multi-disciplinary study known as antiquarianism. Antiquarians studied history with attention to ancient artifacts and manuscripts. Tentative steps towards the systematization of archaeology as a science took place during the Enlightenment era in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, in Europe, philosophical interest in the remains of Greco-Roman civilization and the rediscovery of classical culture began in the late Middle Age. Antiquarians, including John Leland and William Camden, conducted surveys of the English countryside, one of the first sites to undergo archaeological excavation was Stonehenge and other megalithic monuments in England. John Aubrey was a pioneer archaeologist who recorded numerous megalithic and other monuments in southern England. He was also ahead of his time in the analysis of his findings and he attempted to chart the chronological stylistic evolution of handwriting, medieval architecture, costume, and shield-shapes. Excavations were also carried out in the ancient towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum and these excavations began in 1748 in Pompeii, while in Herculaneum they began in 1738. The discovery of entire towns, complete with utensils and even human shapes, however, prior to the development of modern techniques, excavations tended to be haphazard, the importance of concepts such as stratification and context were overlooked. The father of archaeological excavation was William Cunnington and he undertook excavations in Wiltshire from around 1798, funded by Sir Richard Colt Hoare. Cunnington made meticulous recordings of neolithic and Bronze Age barrows, one of the major achievements of 19th century archaeology was the development of stratigraphy. The idea of overlapping strata tracing back to successive periods was borrowed from the new geological and paleontological work of scholars like William Smith, James Hutton, the application of stratigraphy to archaeology first took place with the excavations of prehistorical and Bronze Age sites
20.
Castra
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In the Roman Empire, the Latin word castrum was a building, or plot of land, used as a fortified military camp. Castrum was the used for different sizes of camps including a large legionary fortress, smaller auxiliary forts, temporary encampments. The diminutive form castellum was used for fortlets, typically occupied by a detachment of a cohort or a century, in English, the terms Roman fortress, Roman fort and Roman camp are commonly used for castrum. However, scholastic convention tends toward the use of the camp, marching camp. For a list of known castra see List of castra, the term castrum appears in three Italic languages, Oscan, Umbrian and Latin. g. Castrum Album, Castrum Inui, Castrum Novum, Castrum Truentinum, Castrum Vergium. The plural was used as a place name, as Castra Cornelia. Castrorum Filius was one of names used by the emperor Caligula, the terms stratopedon and phrourion were used by Greek language authors to translate castrum and castellum, respectively. A castrum was designed to house and protect the soldiers, their equipment and this most detailed description that survives about Roman military camps is De Munitionibus Castrorum, a manuscript of 11 pages that dates most probably from the late 1st to early 2nd century AD. Regulations required a major unit in the field to retire to a properly constructed camp every day, to this end a marching column ported the equipment needed to build and stock the camp in a baggage train of wagons and on the backs of the soldiers. They could throw up a camp under enemy attack in as little as a few hours. Judging from the names, they used a repertory of camp plans, selecting the one appropriate to the length of time a legion would spend in it, tertia castra, quarta castra. A camp of three days, four days, etc, more permanent camps were castra stativa, standing camps. The least permanent of these were castra aestiva or aestivalia, summer camps, in which the soldiers were housed sub pellibus or sub tentoriis, under tents. For the winter the soldiers retired to castra hiberna containing barracks and other buildings of solid materials. The camp allowed the Romans to keep a rested and supplied army in the field, neither the Celtic nor Germanic armies had this capability, they found it necessary to disperse after only a few days. The largest castra were legionary fortresses built as bases for one or more whole legions, previously, legions were raised for specific military campaigns and subsequently disbanded, requiring only temporary castra. From then on many castra of various sizes were established many of which became permanent settlements, from the most ancient times Roman camps were constructed according to a certain ideal pattern, formally described in two main sources, the De Munitionibus Castrorum and the works of Polybius
21.
Marcomannic Wars
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The Marcomannic Wars were a series of wars lasting over a dozen years from about 166 until 180 AD. During the years succeeding the rule of Antoninus Pius, the Roman Empire began to be attacked on all sides, a war with Parthia lasted from 161 to 166 and, although it ended successfully, its unforeseen consequences for the Empire were great. The returning troops brought with them a plague, which would kill an estimated 5 million people. As a result, Germanic tribes and other nomadic peoples launched raids south and west across Romes northern border, particularly into Gaul, beginning in 162 and continuing until 165, an invasion of Chatti and Chauci in the provinces of Raetia and Germania Superior was repulsed. In late 166 or early 167, a force of 6,000 Langobardi and this invasion was defeated by local forces with relative ease, but they marked the beginning of what was to come. In their aftermath, the governor of Pannonia, Marcus Iallius Bassus. In these negotiations, the Marcomannic king Ballomar, a Roman client, in the event, a truce was agreed upon and the tribes withdrew from Roman territory, but no permanent agreement was reached. In the same year, Vandals and the Sarmatian Iazyges invaded Dacia, to counter them, Legio V Macedonica, a veteran of the Parthian campaign, was moved from Moesia Inferior to Dacia Superior, closer to the enemy. During that time, as plague was ravaging the empire, Marcus Aurelius was unable to do more, in the spring of that year, Marcus Aurelius, together with Lucius Verus set forth from Rome, and established their headquarters at Aquileia. The two emperors supervised a reorganization of the defences of Italy and the Illyricum, raised two new legions, Legio II Italica and Legio III Italica, and crossed the Alps into Pannonia. The two emperors returned to Aquileia for the winter, but on the way, in January 169, Marcus returned to Rome to oversee his co-emperors funeral. In the autumn of 169, Marcus set out from Rome, together with his son-in-law Claudius Pompeianus, the Romans had gathered their forces and intended to subdue the independent tribes, who lived between the Danube and the Roman province of Dacia. The Iazyges defeated and killed Claudius Fronto, Roman governor of Lower Moesia, however, while the Roman army was entangled in this campaign, making little headway, several tribes used the opportunity to cross the frontier and raid Roman territory. To the east, the Costoboci crossed the Danube, ravaged Thrace and descended into the Balkans, reaching Eleusis, near Athens, the most important and dangerous invasion, however, was that of the Marcomanni in the west. Their leader, Ballomar, had formed a coalition of Germanic tribes and they crossed the Danube and won a decisive victory over a force of 20,000 Roman soldiers near Carnuntum. Ballomar then led the larger part of his host southwards towards Italy, the Marcomanni razed Opitergium and besieged Aquileia. This was the first time hostile forces had entered Italy since 101 BC. The army of praetorian prefect Furius Victorinus tried to relieve the city, there is no consensus amongst scholars as to the year that the great Gemanic invasion towards Aquileia took place
22.
Slavs
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Slavs are the largest Indo-European ethno-linguistic group in Europe. They are native to Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Southeastern Europe, Northeastern Europe, North Asia, Slavs speak Slavic languages of the Balto-Slavic language group. From the early 6th century they spread to inhabit most of Central, states with Slavic languages comprise over 50% of the territory of Europe, therefore it is the largest ethno-linguistic group in Europe by land area. Present-day Slavic people are classified into West Slavs, East Slavs, there are an estimated 360 million Slavs worldwide. The Slavic autonym is reconstructed in Proto-Slavic as *Slověninъ, plural *Slověne, the oldest documents written in Old Church Slavonic and dating from the 9th century attest the autonym as Slověne. The word slovo and the related slava and slukh originate from the Proto-Indo-European root *ḱlew-, cognate with Ancient Greek κλῆς, whence comes the name Pericles, Latin clueo, some other theories have limited support. The English term slave eventually derives from the ethnonym Slav, Slavs were captured and enslaved by the Muslims of Spain during the ninth century AD. The Slavs under name of the Antes and the Sclaveni make their first appearance in Byzantine records in the early 6th century. Procopius wrote in 545 that the Sclaveni and the Antae actually had a name in the remote past. He described them as barbarians, who lived under democracy, and that believe in one god. They lived in scattered housing, and constantly changed settlement, regarding warfare, they were mainly foot soldiers with small shields and battleaxes, lightly clothed, some entering battle naked with only their genitals covered. And they live a life, giving no heed to bodily comforts. Jordanes described the Sclaveni having swamps and forests for their cities, another 6th-century source refers to them living among nearly impenetrable forests, rivers, lakes, and marshes. Menander Protector mentions a Daurentius that slew an Avar envoy of Khagan Bayan I. The Avars asked the Slavs to accept the suzerainty of the Avars, he declined and is reported as saying, Others do not conquer our land. The relationship between the Slavs and a called the Veneti east of the River Vistula in the Roman period is uncertain. The name may refer both to Balts and Slavs, perhaps some Slavs migrated with the movement of the Vandals to Iberia and north Africa. Around the 6th century, Slavs appeared on Byzantine borders in great numbers, the Byzantine records note that grass would not regrow in places where the Slavs had marched through, so great were their numbers
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Gord (archaeology)
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A gord is a medieval Slavonic fortified wooden settlement, sometimes known as a burgwall after the German term for such sites. Gords were built during the late Bronze and early Iron Ages by the Lusatian culture (c, 1300–500 BCE, and later in the 8th–7th centuries BCE, in what are now Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, eastern Germany, and India. These settlements were founded on strategic sites such as hills, riverbanks, lake islands. A typical gord was a group of houses built either in rows or in circles, surrounded by one or more rings of walls made of earth and wood. Some gords were ring-shaped, with a round, oval, or occasionally polygonal fence or wall surrounding a hollow, others, built on a natural hill or a man-made mound, were cone-shaped. Those with a defense on one side, such as a river or lake, were usually horseshoe-shaped. Most gords were built in densely populated areas on sites that offered particular natural advantages, as Slavic tribes united to form states, gords were also built for defensive purposes in less-populated border areas. Gords in which rulers resided or that lay on trade routes quickly expanded, near the gord, or below it in elevation, there formed small communities of servants, merchants, artisans, and others who served the higher-ranked inhabitants of the gord. Each such community was known as a suburbium and its residents could shelter within the walls of the gord in the event of danger. Eventually the suburbium acquired its own fence or wall, in the High Middle Ages, the gord usual evolved into a castle or citadel and the suburbium into a town. Some gords did not stand the test of time and were abandoned or destroyed, notable archeological sites include Biskupin, Poland, and Bilsk, Ukraine. The term ultimately descends from the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European root ǵʰortós, enclosure, from this same root come the Germanic word elements *gard and *gart, and likely also the names of Graz, Austria and Gartz, Germany. Cognate to these are English words such as yard, garth, girdle, also cognate but less closely related are Latin hortus, a garden, and its English descendants horticulture and orchard. Further afield, in ancient Iran, a fortified settlement was called a gerd. Burugerd or Borujerd is a city in the West of Iran, the Indian suffix -garh, meaning a fort in Hindi, Sanskrit, and other Indo-Iranian languages, appears in many Indian place names. The Proto-Slavic word gordъ later differentiated into grad and gorod, etc and it is the root of various words in modern Slavic languages pertaining to fences and fenced areas. Some of them are in countries which once were but no longer are mainly inhabited by Slavic-speaking peoples, the word survives in the names of several villages and town districts, as well as in the names of the German municipalities Puttgarden, Wagria and Putgarten, Rügen. Garðaríki - Varangian name for Kievan Rus, interpreted as cities Biskupin, fortified settlements in other cultures, Kraal, Motte-and-bailey
24.
Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Olomouc
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The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Olomouc is an archdiocese of the Latin Rite of the Roman Catholic Church in the Czech Republic. Not much is known about the beginnings of the Diocese of Olomouc and it was reestablished in 1063 and in 1777 it was elevated to an archdiocese. Minor Basilica, Bazilika Nanebevzetí Panny Marie, Svatý Hostýn, Zlínský kraj Bazilika Nanebevzetí Panny Marie a sv, Karl Joseph von Lothringen Bishop Karl Graf von Liechtenstein-Kastelkorn Fr. Karl Joseph Erzherzog von Österreich Fr
25.
Archbishop
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In Christianity, an archbishop is a bishop of higher rank or office. In some cases, like the Lutheran Church of Sweden, it is the denomination leader title, an archbishop may be granted the title, or ordained as chief pastor of a metropolitan see or another episcopal see to which the title of archbishop is attached. Episcopal sees are generally arranged in groups in which the bishop who is the ordinary of one of them has certain powers and he is known as the metropolitan archbishop of that see. As well as the more numerous metropolitan sees, there are 77 Roman Catholic sees that have archiepiscopal rank. In some cases, such a see is the one in a country, such as Luxembourg or Monaco. In others, the title of archdiocese is for reasons attributed to a see that was once of greater importance. Some of these archdioceses are suffragans of a metropolitan archdiocese, an example is the Archdiocese of Avignon, which is a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Marseille, Another such example is the Archdiocese of Trnava, Slovakia. Others are immediately subject to the Holy See and not to any metropolitan archdiocese and these are usually aggregated to an ecclesiastical province. An example is the Archdiocese of Hobart in Australia, associated with the Metropolitan ecclesiastical province of Melbourne, the ordinary of such an archdiocese is an archbishop, however, especially in the Anglican Communion, not all archbishops dioceses are called archdioceses. Since then, the title of Coadjutor Archbishop of the see is considered sufficient, the rank of archbishop is conferred on some bishops who are not ordinaries of an archdiocese. They hold the rank not because of the see that they head, the bishop transferred is then known as the Archbishop-Bishop of his new see. An example is Gianfranco Gardin, appointed Archbishop-Bishop of Treviso on 21 December 2009, the title borne by the successor of such an archbishop-bishop is merely that of Bishop of the see, unless he also is granted the personal title of Archbishop. The distinction between metropolitan sees and non-metropolitan archiepiscopal sees exists for titular sees as well as for residential ones, the Annuario Pontificio marks titular sees of the former class with the abbreviation Metr. and the others with Arciv. Many of the sees to which nuncios and heads of departments of the Roman Curia who are not cardinals are assigned are not of archiepiscopal rank. In that case the person who is appointed to such a position is given the title of archbishop. They are usually referred to as Archbishop of the see, not as its Archbishop-Bishop, until 1970, such archbishops were transferred to a titular see. There can be several Archbishops Emeriti of the see, the 2008 Annuario Pontificio listed three living Archbishops Emeriti of Taipei. There is no Archbishop Emeritus of a see, an archbishop who holds a titular see keeps it until death or until transferred to another see
26.
Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia
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Wenceslaus I, Wenceslas I, Václav the Good or Saint Wenceslaus was the duke of Bohemia from 921 until his assassination in 935. His younger brother, Boleslaus the Cruel, was complicit in the murder and his martyrdom and the popularity of several biographies gave rise to a reputation for heroic goodness that resulted in his elevation to sainthood. He was posthumously declared to be a king and came to be seen as the saint of the Czech state. He is the subject of the well-known Good King Wenceslas, a carol for Saint Stephens Day, Wenceslas was the son of Vratislaus I, Duke of Bohemia from the Přemyslid dynasty. His grandfather, Bořivoj I of Bohemia, was converted to Christianity by Saints Cyril and his mother, Drahomíra, was the daughter of a pagan tribal chief of the Havelli, but was baptized at the time of her marriage. His paternal grandmother, Ludmila of Bohemia, oversaw his education, in 921, when Wenceslas was about thirteen, his father died and his grandmother became regent. Jealous of the influence that Ludmila wielded over Wenceslas, Drahomíra arranged to have her killed, Ludmila was at Tetín Castle near Beroun when assassins murdered her on September 15,921. She is said to have been strangled by them with her veil. She was at first buried in the church of St. Michael at Tetín, but her remains were removed, probably by Wenceslas, to the church of St. George in Prague. Drahomíra then assumed the role of regent and immediately initiated measures against the Christians, when Wenceslas came of age, he took control of the government. He placed the duchy under the protection of Germany, introduced German priests, and favoured the Latin rite instead of the old Slavic, to prevent disputes between him and his younger brother Boleslav, they divided the country between them, assigning to the latter a considerable territory. To withstand Saxon overlordship, Wenceslass father Vratislaus had forged an alliance with the Bavarian duke Arnulf, the alliance became worthless, however, when Arnulf and Henry reconciled at Regensburg in 921. In 924 or 925, at about the age of 18 and he then defeated a rebellious duke of Kouřim named Radslav. He also founded a rotunda consecrated to St. Vitus at Prague Castle in Prague, Henry had been forced to pay a huge tribute to the Magyars in 926 and needed the Bohemian tribute, which Wenceslas probably refused to pay after the reconciliation between Arnulf and Henry. Another possible reason for the attack was the formation of the alliance between Bohemia, the Polabian Slavs, and the Magyars. In September 935, a group of nobles allied with Wenceslass younger brother Boleslav plotted to kill him. After Boleslav invited Wenceslas to the feast of Saints Cosmas and Damian in Stará Boleslav, three of Boleslavs companions, Tira, Česta, and Hněvsa, fell on the duke, as the duke fell, Boleslav ran him through with a lance. According to Cosmas of Prague, in his Chronica Boëmorum of the early 12th century, because of the ominous circumstance of his birth, the infant was named Strachkvas, which means a dreadful feast
27.
Romanesque architecture
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Romanesque Architecture is an architectural style of medieval Europe characterized by semi-circular arches. There is no consensus for the date of the Romanesque style, with proposals ranging from the 6th to the late 10th century. It developed in the 12th century into the Gothic style, marked by pointed arches, examples of Romanesque architecture can be found across the continent, making it the first pan-European architectural style since Imperial Roman Architecture. The Romanesque style in England is traditionally referred to as Norman architecture, each building has clearly defined forms, frequently of very regular, symmetrical plan, the overall appearance is one of simplicity when compared with the Gothic buildings that were to follow. The style can be identified right across Europe, despite regional characteristics, Many castles were built during this period, but they are greatly outnumbered by churches. The most significant are the great churches, many of which are still standing, more or less complete. The largest groups of Romanesque survivors are in areas that were less prosperous in subsequent periods, including parts of southern France, northern Spain and rural Italy. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word Romanesque means descended from Roman and was first used in English to designate what are now called Romance languages, Romance language is not degenerated Latin language. Latin language is degenerated Romance language, Romanesque architecture is not debased Roman architecture. Roman architecture is debased Romanesque architecture, the first use in a published work is in William Gunns An Inquiry into the Origin and Influence of Gothic Architecture. The term is now used for the more restricted period from the late 10th to 12th centuries, Many castles exist, the foundations of which date from the Romanesque period. Most have been altered, and many are in ruins. By far the greatest number of surviving Romanesque buildings are churches, the scope of Romanesque architecture Romanesque architecture was the first distinctive style to spread across Europe since the Roman Empire. In the more northern countries Roman building styles and techniques had never been adopted except for official buildings, although the round arch continued in use, the engineering skills required to vault large spaces and build large domes were lost. There was a loss of continuity, particularly apparent in the decline of the formal vocabulary of the Classical Orders. In Rome several great Constantinian basilicas continued in use as an inspiration to later builders, the largest building is the church, the plan of which is distinctly Germanic, having an apse at both ends, an arrangement not generally seen elsewhere. Another feature of the church is its regular proportion, the plan of the crossing tower providing a module for the rest of the plan. These features can both be seen at the Proto-Romanesque St. Michaels Church, Hildesheim, 1001–1030, the style, sometimes called First Romanesque or Lombard Romanesque, is characterised by thick walls, lack of sculpture and the presence of rhythmic ornamental arches known as a Lombard band
28.
Wenceslaus III of Bohemia
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Wenceslaus III was King of Hungary between 1301 and 1305, and King of Bohemia and Poland from 1305. He was the son of Wenceslaus II, King of Bohemia, who was also crowned king of Poland. Still a child, Wenceslaus was betrothed to Elizabeth, the daughter of Andrew III of Hungary. Wenceslaus was crowned king of Hungary on 27 August 1301 and he signed his charters under the name Ladislaus in Hungary. His rule was nominal, because a dozen powerful lords held sway over large territories in the kingdom. His father realized that Wenceslauss position could not be strengthened and took him back from Hungary to Bohemia in August 1304, Wenceslaus succeeded his father in Bohemia and Poland on 21 June 1305. He abandoned his claim to Hungary in favor of Otto III of Bavaria on 9 October, Wenceslaus granted large parcels of the royal domains to his young friends in Bohemia. A claimant to the Polish throne, Władysław the Elbow-high, who had started conquering Polish territories during the rule of Wenceslauss father, Wenceslaus decided to invade his rivals territories in Poland, but he was murdered before starting his campaign. He was the last of the male Přemyslid rulers of Bohemia and he was the second son of Wenceslaus II, King of Bohemia and Wenceslaus IIs wife, Judith of Habsburg. He was born in Prague on 6 October 1289 and his elder brother died before his death and he was the only son of his parents to survive infancy. Wenceslaus was still a child when his mother, Judith, died on 18 June 1297 and he was betrothed to Elizabeth of Hungary on 12 February 1298. She was the child of Andrew III of Hungary. Andrew III was the last male member of the House of Árpád, the royal dynasty of Hungary. Wenceslauss father occupied Greater Poland, Kujavia and other regions of Poland in early 1300, after his main opponent, Władysław the Elbow-high, was forced to leave the kingdom, Wenceslaus II was crowned king of Poland in Gniezno in late September 1300. However, Pope Boniface VIII refused to confirm Wenceslaus IIs position in Poland, Andrew III of Hungary died on 14 January 1301, leaving no male heirs. The late kings rival, Charles of Anjou, who was Béla IV of Hungarys great-great-grandson, had regarded himself as the king of Hungary for years. On hearing Andrew IIIs death, Charles of Anjou hurried to Esztergom where Gregory Bicskei, Archbishop-elect of Esztergom, Charless coronation was not performed with the Holy Crown of Hungary in Székesfehérvár, as it was required by customary law, but with a provisional crown in Esztergom. Accordingly, the Diet of Hungary declared Charless coronation invalid on 13 May 1301, Jan Muskata, Bishop of Cracow, who was Wenceslaus II of Bohemias advisor, was the first to propose that Wenceslaus IIs son and namesake should be elected king of Hungary
29.
Poland
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Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe, situated between the Baltic Sea in the north and two mountain ranges in the south. Bordered by Germany to the west, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south, Ukraine and Belarus to the east, the total area of Poland is 312,679 square kilometres, making it the 69th largest country in the world and the 9th largest in Europe. With a population of over 38.5 million people, Poland is the 34th most populous country in the world, the 8th most populous country in Europe, Poland is a unitary state divided into 16 administrative subdivisions, and its capital and largest city is Warsaw. Other metropolises include Kraków, Wrocław, Poznań, Gdańsk and Szczecin, the establishment of a Polish state can be traced back to 966, when Mieszko I, ruler of a territory roughly coextensive with that of present-day Poland, converted to Christianity. The Kingdom of Poland was founded in 1025, and in 1569 it cemented a political association with the Grand Duchy of Lithuania by signing the Union of Lublin. This union formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the largest and most populous countries of 16th and 17th century Europe, Poland regained its independence in 1918 at the end of World War I, reconstituting much of its historical territory as the Second Polish Republic. In September 1939, World War II started with the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, followed thereafter by invasion by the Soviet Union. More than six million Polish citizens died in the war, after the war, Polands borders were shifted westwards under the terms of the Potsdam Conference. With the backing of the Soviet Union, a communist puppet government was formed, and after a referendum in 1946. During the Revolutions of 1989 Polands Communist government was overthrown and Poland adopted a new constitution establishing itself as a democracy, informally called the Third Polish Republic. Since the early 1990s, when the transition to a primarily market-based economy began, Poland has achieved a high ranking on the Human Development Index. Poland is a country, which was categorised by the World Bank as having a high-income economy. Furthermore, it is visited by approximately 16 million tourists every year, Poland is the eighth largest economy in the European Union and was the 6th fastest growing economy on the continent between 2010 and 2015. According to the Global Peace Index for 2014, Poland is ranked 19th in the list of the safest countries in the world to live in. The origin of the name Poland derives from a West Slavic tribe of Polans that inhabited the Warta River basin of the historic Greater Poland region in the 8th century, the origin of the name Polanie itself derives from the western Slavic word pole. In some foreign languages such as Hungarian, Lithuanian, Persian and Turkish the exonym for Poland is Lechites, historians have postulated that throughout Late Antiquity, many distinct ethnic groups populated the regions of what is now Poland. The most famous archaeological find from the prehistory and protohistory of Poland is the Biskupin fortified settlement, dating from the Lusatian culture of the early Iron Age, the Slavic groups who would form Poland migrated to these areas in the second half of the 5th century AD. With the Baptism of Poland the Polish rulers accepted Christianity and the authority of the Roman Church
30.
Brno
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Brno is the second largest city in the Czech Republic by population and area, the largest Moravian city, and the historical capital city of the Margraviate of Moravia. Brno is the center of the South Moravian Region in which it forms a separate district. The city is also a significant administrative centre and it is the seat of a number of state authorities, including the Ombudsman, and the Office for the Protection of Competition. Brno is also an important centre of education, with 33 faculties belonging to 13 institutes of higher learning. Brno Exhibition Centre ranks among the largest exhibition centres in Europe, the complex opened in 1928 and established the tradition of large exhibitions and trade fairs held in Brno. Brno hosts motorbike and other races on the Masaryk Circuit, an established in 1930. Another cultural tradition is a fireworks competition, Ignis Brunensis. The other large preserved castle near the city is Veveří Castle by the Brno Dam Lake and this castle is the site of a number of legends, as are many other places in Brno. Another architectural monument of Brno is the functionalist Villa Tugendhat which has been included on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites, one of the natural sights nearby is the Moravian Karst. The etymology of the name Brno is disputed and it perhaps comes from Old Czech brnie muddy, swampy. Alternative derivations are from a Slavic verb brniti or a Celtic language spoken in the area before it was overrun by Germanic peoples, throughout its history, Brnos locals also referred to the town in other languages, including Brünn in German, ברין in Yiddish and Bruna in Latin. The city was referred to as Brunn in English. The Asteroid 2889 Brno was named after the city, as well as the Bren light machine gun, one of the most famous weapons of World War II. In the early 11th century Brno was established as a castle of a prince from the House of Přemyslid. Brno was first mentioned in Cosmas Chronica Boëmorum dated to year 1091, seats of these rulers and thus capitals of these territories were castles and towns of Brno, Olomouc, and Znojmo. In the late 12th century, Moravia began to reunify, forming the Margraviate of Moravia, since then, until the mid of the 17th century, it was not clear which town should be the capital of Moravia. Political power was therefore divided between Brno and Olomouc, but Znojmo also played an important role. The Moravian Diet, the Moravian Land Tables, and the Moravian Land Court were all seated in both cities at once, however, Brno was the official seat of the Moravian Margraves, and later its geographical position closer to Vienna also became important
31.
Swedish Empire
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The Swedish Empire refers to the Kingdom of Swedens territorial control of much of the Baltic region during the 17th and early 18th centuries, a time when Sweden was one of the great European powers. The beginning of the Empire is usually taken as the reign of Gustavus Adolphus, who ascended the throne in 1611, in Swedish history, the period is referred to as stormaktstiden, literally meaning the Great Power era. The interests of the high nobility contrasted with the uniformity policy, in territories acquired during the periods of de facto noble rule, serfdom was not abolished, and there was also a trend to set up respective estates in Sweden proper. The Great Reduction of 1680 put an end to efforts of the nobility. However, in the course of this war as well as in the subsequent Scanian War, Sweden was able to maintain her empire only with support of her closest ally. Charles XI of Sweden consolidated the empire and ensured a period of peace, before Russia, Saxony and Denmark started an attack on his successor. Sweden emerged as a great European power under Axel Oxenstierna and King Gustavus Adolphus, during the Thirty Years War, Sweden managed to conquer approximately half of the member states of the Holy Roman Empire. After France had intervened on the side as Sweden, the fortunes would shift again. As the war continued, it turned more and more grim, although exact population estimates do not exist, historians estimate that as many as one-third of the people in the Holy Roman Empire may have died as a result of the war. At the same time, Sweden joined the other important northern European nations in founding overseas colonies, New Sweden was founded in the valley of the Delaware River in 1638, and Sweden later laid claim to a number of Caribbean islands. A string of Swedish forts and trading posts was constructed along the coast of West Africa as well, at the conclusion of the Thirty Years War, the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 granted Sweden territories as war reparations. Sweden demanded Silesia, Pomerania pay a sum of 200,000 Riksdaler out of the lands they would receive, or 2) surrender a fourth of the property itself. Against this, the over-taxed lower estates protested, and the Diet had to be suspended, the king intervened, not to quell the commons, as the senate insisted, but to compel the nobility to give way. He proposed a committee to investigate the matter before the meeting of the next Riksdag. Charles X Gustav had done his best to recover from the extravagance of Christina. However, his own desire for military glory may have caused problems for his country, in three days, he persuaded the Swedish estates of the potential of his attack on the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. However, when he left Stockholm for Warsaw on July 10,1654, the Polish-Swedish War expanded into a general European war. He achieved passage over the Belts and emerged triumphant, only to die of sheer exhaustion, immediately after his death, a regency was appointed to govern Sweden during the minority of his only son and successor, Charles XI of Sweden, who was four years old
32.
Mongol Empire
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The Mongol Empire existed during the 13th and 14th centuries and was the largest contiguous land empire in history. The Mongol Empire emerged from the unification of tribes in the Mongol homeland under the leadership of Genghis Khan. The empire grew rapidly under the rule of him and his descendants, the Toluids prevailed after a bloody purge of Ögedeid and Chagataid factions, but disputes continued even among the descendants of Tolui. Kublai successfully took power, but civil war ensued as Kublai sought unsuccessfully to control of the Chagatayid and Ögedeid families. The Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260 marked the point of the Mongol conquests and was the first time a Mongol advance had ever been beaten back in direct combat on the battlefield. In 1304, the three western khanates briefly accepted the suzerainty of the Yuan dynasty, but it was later taken by the Han Chinese Ming dynasty in 1368. What is referred to in English as the Mongol Empire was called the Ikh Mongol Uls, in the 1240s, one of Genghiss descendants, Güyük Khan, wrote a letter to Pope Innocent IV which used the preamble Dalai Khagan of the great Mongolian state. After the succession war between Kublai Khan and his brother Ariq Böke, Ariq limited Kublais power to the part of the empire. Kublai officially issued an edict on December 18,1271 to name the country Great Yuan to establish the Yuan dynasty. Some sources state that the full Mongolian name was Dai Ön Yehe Monggul Ulus, the area around Mongolia, Manchuria, and parts of North China had been controlled by the Liao dynasty since the 10th century. In 1125, the Jin dynasty founded by the Jurchens overthrew the Liao dynasty, in the 1130s the Jin dynasty rulers, known as the Golden Kings, successfully resisted the Khamag Mongol confederation, ruled at the time by Khabul Khan, great-grandfather of Temujin. The Mongolian plateau was occupied mainly by five powerful tribal confederations, Keraites, Khamag Mongol, Naiman, Mergid, khabuls successor was Ambaghai Khan, who was betrayed by the Tatars, handed over to the Jurchen, and executed. The Mongols retaliated by raiding the frontier, resulting in a failed Jurchen counter-attack in 1143, in 1147, the Jin somewhat changed their policy, signing a peace treaty with the Mongols and withdrawing from a score of forts. The Mongols then resumed attacks on the Tatars to avenge the death of their late khan, the Jin and Tatar armies defeated the Mongols in 1161. During the rise of the Mongol Empire in the 13th century and it is thought that as a result, a rapid increase in the number of war horses and other livestock significantly enhanced Mongol military strength. Known during his childhood as Temujin, Genghis Khan was the son of a Mongol chieftain, when he was young he was from one of Yesugis orphaned and deserted families, he rose very rapidly by working with Toghrul Khan of the Kerait. Kurtait was the most powerful Mongol leader during this time and was given the Chinese title Wang which means Prince, Temujin went to war with Wang Khan. After Temujin defeated Wang Khan he gave himself the name Genghis Khan and he then enlarged his Mongol state under himself and his kin
33.
Mongol invasion of Europe
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The Mongol invasion of Europe in the 13th century was the military effort by an Asian power, the Mongol Empire, to invade and conquer parts of Europe. It involved the severe and rampant destruction of East Slavic principalities and major cities, such as Kiev, Mongol invasions also affected Central Europe, leading to conflict with the Kingdom of Hungary and fragmented Poland. The operations were masterminded by General Subutai and commanded by Batu Khan and Kadan, as a result of the invasions, many of the conquered territories would become part of the Golden Horde empire. Historians regard the Mongol raids and invasions as among the deadliest conflicts in history up through that period. Ögedei Khan ordered Batu Khan to conquer Rus in 1235, the main force, headed by Jochis sons, and their cousins, Möngke Khan and Güyük Khan, arrived at Ryazan in December 1237. Ryazan refused to surrender, and the Mongols sacked it and then stormed Suzdalia, many Rus armies were defeated, Grand Prince Yuri was killed on the Sit River. Major cities such as Vladimir, Torzhok, and Kozelsk were captured, afterward, the Mongols turned their attention to the steppe, crushing the Kypchaks and the Alans and sacking Crimea. Batu appeared in Ukraine in 1239, sacking Pereiaslav and Chernihiv, most of the Rus princes fled when it became clear resistance was futile. The Mongols sacked Kiev on December 6,1240 and conquered Galich, Batu sent a small detachment to probe the Poles before passing on to Central Europe. One column was routed by the Poles while the defeated the Polish army. The Mongols had acquired Chinese gunpowder, which deployed in battle during the invasion of Europe to great success. The attack on Europe was planned and executed by Subutai, who achieved perhaps his most lasting fame with his victories there. Having devastated the various Rus principalities, he sent spies into Poland and Hungary, having a clear picture of the European kingdoms, he prepared an attack nominally commanded by Batu Khan and two other familial-related princes. He also commanded the column that moved against Hungary. While Kadans northern force won the Battle of Legnica and Güyüks army triumphed in Transylvania, the newly reunited army then withdrew to the Sajo River where they inflicted a decisive defeat on King Béla IV of Hungary at the Battle of Mohi. Again, Subutai masterminded the operation, and it would one of his greatest victories. The Mongols invaded Central Europe with three armies, one army defeated an alliance which included forces from fragmented Poland and members of various Christian military orders, led by Henry II the Pious, Duke of Silesia in the battle of Legnica. A second army crossed the Carpathian mountains and a third followed the Danube, the armies re-grouped and crushed Hungary in 1241, defeating the Hungarian army at the Battle of Mohi on April 11,1241
34.
Battle of Legnica
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The battle came two days before the Mongol victory over the Hungarians at the much larger Battle of Mohi. As with many battles, the exact details of force composition, tactics. The general historical view is that it was a defeat for the European forces where they suffered heavy casualties. It is known that the Mongols had no intentions at the time of extending the campaign westward, because they went to the Kingdom of Hungary to help the main Mongol army in the conquest of the country. One of the Mongol leaders, Kadan, was confused with Ögedeis grandson Kaidu by medieval chroniclers. The Mongols considered the Cumans to have submitted to their authority, after King Béla IV of Hungary rejected Batu Khans ultimatum to surrender the Cumans, Subutai began planning the Mongol invasion of Europe. Ordas forces devastated northern Poland and the border of Lithuania. While deciding whether or not to besiege Wrocław, Baidar and Kadan received reports that King Wenceslaus I of Bohemia was two days away with an army twice the size of Henrys. The Mongols turned from Wrocław to intercept Henrys forces before the European armies could meet, the Mongols caught up with Henry near Legnica at Legnickie Pole, also known as Wahlstatt. The Mongol diversionary force, a detachment from the army of Subutai, demonstrated the advantages of the tactical mobility and speed of horseback archers. These were standard Mongol tactics used in all of their major battles, they were made possible by continual training and superb battlefield communication. The Mongol commander found the highest ground at the site, seized it and used it to communicate to his noyans. The Mongol system was a stark contrast to the European systems, the numbers involved are difficult to judge. European accounts vary as to Mongol numbers—some suggest more than 100,000 at Legnica alone, current estimates suggest the Mongol force numbered, at most,25,000 cavalry. The Historia Tatarorum by the Franciscan C, a contemporary European account, the Ystoria Mongalorum, supports these numbers, placing the Mongol force that invaded Poland at 10,000 horsemen. Henrys better trained troops were his own gathered from Silesian Piast duchies, mercenaries, historian Marek Cetwiński estimates the allied force to have been 2,000 strong, while Gerard Labuda estimates 7, 000–8,000 soldiers in the Christian army. A contingent of Teutonic Knights of indeterminate number is believed to have joined the allied army. However, recent analysis of the 15th-century Annals of Jan Długosz by Labuda suggests that the German crusaders may have added to the text after chronicler Długosz had completed the work
35.
Matthias Corvinus
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Matthias Corvinus, also called Matthias I, was King of Hungary and Croatia from 1458 to 1490. After conducting several military campaigns, he was elected King of Bohemia in 1469 and he was the son of John Hunyadi, Regent of Hungary, who died in 1456. In 1457, Matthias was imprisoned along with his brother, Ladislaus Hunyadi. Ladislaus Hunyadi was executed, causing a rebellion that forced King Ladislaus to flee Hungary, after the King died unexpectedly, Matthiass uncle Michael Szilágyi persuaded the Estates to unanimously proclaim Matthias king on 24 January 1458. He began his rule under his uncles guardianship, but he took control of government within two weeks. As king, Matthias waged wars against the Czech mercenaries who dominated Upper Hungary and against Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, in this period, the Ottoman Empire conquered Serbia and Bosnia, terminating the zone of buffer states along the southern frontiers of the Kingdom of Hungary. Matthias signed a treaty with Frederick III in 1463, acknowledging the Emperors right to style himself King of Hungary. The Emperor returned the Holy Crown of Hungary with which Matthias was crowned on 29 April 1464, in this year, Matthias invaded the territories that had recently been occupied by the Ottomans and seized fortresses in Bosnia. He soon realized he could expect no aid from the Christian powers. Matthias introduced new taxes and regularly collected extraordinary taxes and these measures caused a rebellion in Transylvania in 1467, but he subdued the rebels. The next year, Matthias declared war on George of Poděbrady, the Hussite King of Bohemia, and conquered Moravia, Silesia, and Lausitz, but he could not occupy Bohemia proper. The Catholic Estates proclaimed him King of Bohemia on 3 May 1469, instead, they elected Vladislaus Jagiellon, the eldest son of Casimir IV of Poland. A group of Hungarian prelates and lords offered the throne to Vladislauss younger brother Casimir, having routed the united troops of Casimir IV and Vladislaus at Breslau in Silesia in late 1474, Matthias turned against the Ottomans, who had devastated the eastern parts of Hungary. He sent reinforcements to Stephen the Great, Prince of Moldavia, in 1476, Matthias besieged and seized Šabac, an important Ottoman border fort. He concluded a treaty with Vladislaus Jagiellon in 1478, confirming the division of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown between them. Matthias waged a war against Emperor Frederick and occupied Lower Austria between 1482 and 1487, Matthias patronized art and science, his royal library, the Bibliotheca Corviniana, was one of the largest collections of books in Europe. With his patronage, Hungary became the first country to embrace the Renaissance from Italy, as Matthias the Just, the monarch who wandered among his subjects in disguise, he remains a popular hero of Hungarian folk tales. Matthias was born in Kolozsvár on 23 February 1443 and he was the second son of John Hunyadi and his wife, Elisabeth Szilágyi
36.
Kingdom of Bohemia
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The Kingdom of Bohemia, sometimes in English literature referred to as the Czech Kingdom, was a medieval and early modern monarchy in Central Europe, the predecessor of the modern Czech Republic. It was an Imperial State in the Holy Roman Empire, the kings of Bohemia, besides Bohemia ruled also the Lands of the Bohemian Crown, which at various times included Moravia, Silesia and parts of Saxony, Brandenburg and Bavaria. Numerous kings of Bohemia were also elected Holy Roman Emperors and the capital Prague was the seat in the late 14th century. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, the became part of the Habsburg Austrian Empire. The Czech language was the language of the Diet and the nobility until 1627. German was then formally made equal with Czech and eventually prevailed as the language of the Diet until the Czech national revival in the 19th century. German was also used as the language of administration in many towns after Germans immigrated and populated some areas of the country in the 13th century. The royal court used the Czech, Latin, and German languages, depending on the ruler, following the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I, both the Kingdom and Empire were dissolved. Bohemia became the part of the newly formed Czechoslovak Republic. In 1204 Ottokars royal status was accepted by Otto IV as well as by Pope Innocent III and it was officially recognized in 1212 by the Golden Bull of Sicily issued by Emperor Frederick II, elevating the Duchy of Bohemia to Kingdom status. Under these terms, the Czech king was to be exempt from all obligations to the Holy Roman Empire except for participation in the imperial councils. The imperial prerogative to ratify each Bohemian ruler and to appoint the bishop of Prague was revoked, the kings successor was his son Wenceslaus I, from his second marriage. Corresponding with the Pope, she established the Knights of the Cross with the Red Star in 1233, four other military orders were present in Bohemia, the Order of St. John of Jerusalem from c. 1160, the Order of Saint Lazarus from the late 12th century, 1200–1421, and the Knights Templar from 1232–1312. The 13th century was the most dynamic period of the Přemyslid reign over Bohemia, at the same time, the Mongol invasions absorbed the attention of Bohemias eastern neighbors, Hungary and Poland. Přemysl Ottokar II married a German princess, Margaret of Babenberg and he thereby acquired Upper Austria, Lower Austria, and part of Styria. He conquered the rest of Styria, most of Carinthia, and he was called the king of iron and gold. He campaigned as far as Prussia, where he defeated the natives and in 1256, founded a city he named Královec in Czech
37.
Vladislaus II of Hungary
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Vladislaus II, also known as Vladislav II, Władysław II or Wladislas II, was King of Bohemia from 1471 to 1516, and King of Hungary and Croatia from 1490 to 1516. As the eldest son of Casimir IV Jagiellon, he was expected to inherit Poland, George of Poděbrady, the Hussite ruler of Bohemia, offered to make Vladislaus his heir in 1468. Poděbrady needed Casimir IVs support against the rebellious Catholic noblemen and their ally, Matthias Corvinus, the Diet of Bohemia elected Vladislaus king after Poděbradys death, but he could only rule Bohemia proper, because Matthias occupied Moravia, Silesia and Lusatia. Vladislaus tried to reconquer the three provinces with his fathers assistance, but Matthias repelled them, Vladislaus and Matthias divided the Lands of the Bohemian Crown in the Peace of Olomouc in 1479. The Estates of the realm had strengthened their position during the war between the two kings, Vladislauss attempts to promote the Catholics caused a rebellion in Prague and other towns in 1483, forcing him to acknowledge the dominance of the Hussites in the municipal assemblies. The Diet confirmed the right of the Bohemian noblemen and commoners to freely adhere either to Hussitism or Catholicism in 1485, after Matthias Corvinus seized Silesian duchies to grant them to his illegitimate son, John Corvinus, Vladislaus made new alliances against him in the late 1480s. Vladislaus laid claim to Hungary after Matthiass death, the Diet of Hungary elected him king after his supporters defeated John Corvinus. The other two claimants, Maximilian of Habsburg and Vladislauss brother, John Albert, invaded Hungary, but they could not assert their claim and he settled in Buda, enabling the Estates of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Lusatia to take full charge of state administration. In Hungary, Vladislaus always approved the decisions of the Royal Council and they even annexed territories in Croatia after annihilating the united army of the Croatian barons in the Battle of Krbava Field in 1493. Vladislaus was the eldest son of Casimir IV, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania and she was the daughter of Albert, King of the Romans, Hungary and Bohemia. Vladislaus was born in Kraków on 1 March 1456 and his mother and father laid claim to Hungary and Bohemia after her childless brother, Ladislaus the Posthumous, died on 23 November 1457. However, their claims were ignored in both Hungary and Bohemia, the Diet of Hungary elected Matthias Corvinus king on 24 January 1458. The Bohemian Estates of the realm proclaimed the Hussite George of Poděbrady king on 2 March, Vladislaus was his fathers heir in Poland and Lithuania. Casimir IV wanted to prepare all his sons for ruling a realm, the historian Jan Długosz was Vladislauss tutor. Pope Paul II excommunicated George of Poděbrady in late 1466 and proclaimed a crusade against him, the Czech Catholic noblemen rose up against the heretic Poděbrady and sought assistance from Matthias Corvinus. Matthias declared war in March 1468 and invaded Moravia, on 16 May 1468, Poděbrady offered Casimir IV to make Vladislaus his heir if Casimir mediated a peace treaty between Bohemia and Hungary. Matthias refused Casimirs offer, but Poděbrady forced him to sign a truce in early 1469, fearing of losing Matthiass support, the Catholic nobles proclaimed him king of Bohemia in Olomouc on 3 May. After Poděbrady repeated his offer of bequeathing Bohemia to Vladislaus, Casimir IV entered into negotiations with the Holy Roman Emperor, Poděbrady died on 22 March 1471
38.
Peace of Olomouc
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The Peace of Olomouc was signed on 2 April 1479 between Matthias Corvinus of Hungary and King Vladislaus II of Bohemia, bringing the Bohemian War to an end. On 21 July 1479 the agreement was ratified during the course of festivities in Olomouc and this treaty, overall, ratified all terms within the Treaty of Brno developed in March 1478. Based on the terms of the treaty, Vladislaus would cede the territories of Moravia, Silesia, if Matthias perished, then Vladislaus was permitted to redeem these lands for 400,000 florins. Moreover, both monarchs would be permitted to utilize the title King of Bohemia, however, only Matthias was required to address the other claimant as the King of Bohemia. List of treaties Treaty of Brno Engel, Pál, the Realm of St Stephen, A History of Medieval Hungary, 895-1526
39.
Bastion fort
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A star fort, bastion fort or trace italienne, is a fortification in a style that evolved during the age of gunpowder when the cannon came to dominate the battlefield. It was first seen in the century in Italy. The design of the fort is normally a pentagon or hexagon with bastions at the corners of the walls and these outcroppings are present for the purpose of a total, panoramic view of the battlefield. Because of the bastions, archers and cannon operators can hit any target on the battlefield without having to lean over the wall, many bastion forts also feature cavaliers, which are raised secondary structures based entirely inside the primary structure. The predecessors of star fortifications were medieval fortresses, usually placed on high hills, from there, arrows were shot at the enemies, and the higher the fortress was, the further the arrows flew. The enemies hope was to ram the gate or climb over the wall with ladders. For the invading force, these fortifications proved quite difficult to overcome, passive ring-shaped fortifications of the Medieval era proved vulnerable to damage or destruction by cannon fire, when it could be directed from outside against a perpendicular masonry wall. In addition, a force that could get close to the wall was able to conduct undermining operations in relative safety. In contrast, the fortress was a very flat structure composed of many triangular bastions, specifically designed to cover each other. In order to counteract the cannonballs, defensive walls were lower and thicker. The outer side of the ditch was provided with a glacis to deflect cannonballs aimed at the lower part of the main wall. They were built of materials, usually earth and brick. Star fortifications were developed in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries primarily in response to the French invasion of the Italian peninsula. The French army was equipped with new cannon and bombards that were able to destroy traditional fortifications built in the Middle Ages. Star forts were employed by Michelangelo in the earthworks of Florence. The design spread out of Italy in the 1530s and 1540s and it was employed heavily throughout Europe for the following three centuries. Italian engineers were heavily in demand throughout Europe to help build the new fortifications, the late-seventeenth-century architects Menno van Coehoorn and especially Vauban, Louis XIVs military engineer, are considered to have taken the form to its logical extreme. In the 19th century, the development of the explosive shell changed the nature of defensive fortifications, elvas, in Portugal is considered by some to be the best surviving example of the Dutch school of fortifications
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Reformation
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The period is usually considered to have begun with the publication of the Ninety-five Theses by Luther in 1517 to the Thirty Years War and ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The Protestant position, however, would come to incorporate doctrinal changes such as sola scriptura, the initial movement within Germany diversified, and other reform impulses arose independently of Luther. The spread of Gutenbergs printing press provided the means for the dissemination of religious materials in the vernacular. The largest groups were the Lutherans and Calvinists, Lutheran churches were founded mostly in Germany, the Baltics and Scandinavia, while the Reformed ones were founded in Switzerland, Hungary, France, the Netherlands and Scotland. The new movement influenced the Church of England decisively after 1547 under Edward VI and Elizabeth I, there were also reformation movements throughout continental Europe known as the Radical Reformation, which gave rise to the Anabaptist, Moravian and other Pietistic movements. The Roman Catholic Church responded with a Counter-Reformation initiated by the Council of Trent, much work in battling Protestantism was done by the well-organised new order of the Jesuits. In general, Northern Europe, with the exception of most of Ireland, southern Europe remained Roman Catholic, while Central Europe was a site of a fierce conflict, culminating in the Thirty Years War, which left it devastated. The oldest Protestant churches, such as the Unitas Fratrum and Moravian Church, the later Protestant Churches generally date their doctrinal separation from the Roman Catholic Church to the 16th century. The Reformation began as an attempt to reform the Roman Catholic Church, by priests who opposed what they perceived as false doctrines and ecclesiastic malpractice. They especially objected to the teaching and the sale of indulgences, and the abuses thereof, and to simony, the reformers saw these practices as evidence of the systemic corruption of the Churchs hierarchy, which included the pope. Unrest due to the Great Schism of Western Christianity excited wars between princes, uprisings among the peasants, and widespread concern over corruption in the Church, New perspectives came from John Wycliffe at Oxford University and from Jan Hus at the Charles University in Prague. Hus rejected indulgences and adopted a doctrine of justification by grace through faith alone, the Roman Catholic Church officially concluded this debate at the Council of Constance by condemning Hus, who was executed by burning despite a promise of safe-conduct. Wycliffe was posthumously condemned as a heretic and his corpse exhumed and burned in 1428, the Council of Constance confirmed and strengthened the traditional medieval conception of church and empire. The council did not address the national tensions or the theological tensions stirred up during the century and could not prevent schism. Pope Sixtus IV established the practice of selling indulgences to be applied to the dead, Pope Alexander VI was one of the most controversial of the Renaissance popes. He was the father of seven children, including Lucrezia and Cesare Borgia, in response to papal corruption, particularly the sale of indulgences, Luther wrote The Ninety-Five Theses. The Reformation was born of Luthers dual declaration – first, the discovering of Jesus and salvation by faith alone, the Protestant reformers were unanimous in agreement and this understanding of prophecy furnished importance to their deeds. It was the point and the battle cry that made the Reformation nearly unassailable
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Thirty Years' War
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The Thirty Years War was a series of wars in Central Europe between 1618 and 1648. It was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history, as well as the deadliest European religious war, resulting in eight million casualties. Initially a war between various Protestant and Catholic states in the fragmented Holy Roman Empire, it developed into a more general conflict involving most of the great powers. These states employed relatively large mercenary armies, and the war became less about religion, in the 17th century, religious beliefs and practices were a much larger influence on an average European than they are today. The war began when the newly elected Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand II, tried to impose uniformity on his domains. The northern Protestant states, angered by the violation of their rights to choose that had granted in the Peace of Augsburg. Ferdinand II was a devout Roman Catholic and relatively intolerant when compared to his predecessor and his policies were considered strongly pro-Catholic. They ousted the Habsburgs and elected Frederick V, Elector of the Rhenish Palatinate as their monarch, Frederick took the offer without the support of the union. The southern states, mainly Roman Catholic, were angered by this, led by Bavaria, these states formed the Catholic League to expel Frederick in support of the Emperor. The Empire soon crushed this rebellion in the Battle of White Mountain. After the atrocities committed in Bohemia, Saxony finally gave its support to the union, Spain, wishing to finally crush the Dutch rebels in the Netherlands and the Dutch Republic, intervened under the pretext of helping its dynastic Habsburg ally, Austria. No longer able to tolerate the encirclement of two major Habsburg powers on its borders, Catholic France entered the coalition on the side of the Protestants in order to counter the Habsburgs. Both mercenaries and soldiers in fighting armies traditionally looted or extorted tribute to get operating funds, the war also bankrupted most of the combatant powers. The Thirty Years War ended with the treaties of Osnabrück and Münster, the war altered the previous political order of European powers. Lutherans living in a prince-bishopric could continue to practice their faith, Lutherans could keep the territory they had taken from the Catholic Church since the Peace of Passau in 1552. Those prince-bishops who had converted to Lutheranism were required to give up their territories and this added a third major faith to the region, but its position was not recognized in any way by the Augsburg terms, to which only Catholicism and Lutheranism were parties. The Dutch revolted against Spanish domination during the 1560s, leading to a war of independence that led to a truce only in 1609. This dynastic concern overtook religious ones and led to Catholic Frances participation on the otherwise Protestant side of the war, Sweden and Denmark-Norway were interested in gaining control over northern German states bordering the Baltic Sea
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Prussian Army
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The Royal Prussian Army served as the army of the Kingdom of Prussia. It became vital to the development of Brandenburg-Prussia as a European power, the Prussian Army had its roots in the core mercenary forces of Brandenburg during the Thirty Years War of 1618-1648. Elector Frederick William developed it into a standing army, while King Frederick William I of Prussia dramatically increased its size. The army had become outdated by the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars, conservatives halted some of the reforms, however, and the Prussian Army subsequently became a bulwark of the conservative Prussian government. In the 19th century the Prussian Army fought successful wars against Denmark, Austria and France, allowing Prussia to unify Germany, the Prussian Army formed the core of the Imperial German Army, which was replaced by the Reichswehr after World War I. The army of Prussia grew out of the armed forces created during the reign of Elector Frederick William of Brandenburg. Hohenzollern Brandenburg-Prussia had primarily relied upon Landsknecht mercenaries during the Thirty Years War, Swedish and Imperial forces occupied the country. In the spring of 1644, Frederick William started building an army through conscription to better defend his state. By 1643–44, the army numbered only 5,500 troops. The electors confidant Johann von Norprath recruited forces in the Duchy of Cleves and organized an army of 3,000 Dutch, garrisons were also slowly augmented in Brandenburg and the Duchy of Prussia. Frederick William sought assistance from France, the rival of Habsburg Austria. He based his reforms on those of Louvois, the War Minister of King Louis XIV of France, the growth of his army allowed Frederick William to achieve considerable territorial acquisitions in the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia, despite Brandenburgs relative lack of success during the war. The provincial estates desired a reduction in the size during peacetime. In the 1653 Brandenburg Recess between Frederick William and the estates of Brandenburg, the nobility provided the sovereign with 530,000 thalers in return for affirmation of their privileges, the Junkers thus cemented their political power at the expense of the peasantry. Once the elector and his army were strong enough, Frederick William was able to suppress the estates of Cleves, Mark, Frederick William attempted to professionalize his soldiers during a time when mercenaries were the norm. Acts of violence by officers against civilians resulted in decommission for a year, Field Marshals of Brandenburg-Prussia included Derfflinger, John George II, Spaen and Sparr. The electors troops traditionally were organized into disconnected provincial forces, in 1655, Frederick William began the unification of the various detachments by placing them under the overall command of Sparr. Unification also increased through the appointment of Generalkriegskommissar Platen as head of supplies and these measures decreased the authority of the largely mercenary colonels who had been so prominent during the Thirty Years War
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Maria Theresa
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Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina was the only female ruler of the Habsburg dominions and the last of the House of Habsburg. She was the sovereign of Austria, Hungary, Croatia, Bohemia, Transylvania, Mantua, Milan, Lodomeria and Galicia, by marriage, she was Duchess of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany and Holy Roman Empress. She started her 40-year reign when her father, Emperor Charles VI, Charles VI paved the way for her accession with the Pragmatic Sanction of 1713 and spent his entire reign securing it. Upon the death of her father, Saxony, Prussia, Bavaria, Prussia proceeded to invade the affluent Habsburg province of Silesia, sparking a nine-year conflict known as the War of the Austrian Succession, and subsequently conquered it. Maria Theresa would later try to reconquer Silesia during the Seven Years War. Of the sixteen, ten survived to adulthood and she had eleven daughters and five sons. She criticised and disapproved of many of Josephs actions, Maria Theresa understood the importance of her public persona and was able to simultaneously evoke both esteem and affection from her subjects. However, she refused to allow religious toleration and contemporary travelers thought her regime was bigoted and superstitious. As a young monarch who fought two wars, she believed that her cause should be the cause of her subjects. The dowager empresses, her aunt Wilhelmine Amalia of Brunswick-Lüneburg and grandmother Eleonor Magdalene of the Palatinate-Neuburg, were her godmothers and her father was the only surviving male member of the House of Habsburg and hoped for a son who would prevent the extinction of his dynasty and succeed him. Thus, the birth of Maria Theresa was a disappointment to him. Charles sought the other European powers approval for disinheriting his nieces and they exacted harsh terms, in the Treaty of Vienna, Great Britain demanded that Austria abolish the Ostend Company in return for its recognition of the Pragmatic Sanction. France, Spain, Saxony-Poland, Bavaria and Prussia later reneged, little more than a year after her birth, Maria Theresa was joined by a sister, Maria Anna, and another one, named Maria Amalia, was born in 1724. The portraits of the family show that Maria Theresa resembled Elisabeth Christine. The Prussian ambassador noted that she had blue eyes, fair hair with a slight tinge of red, a wide mouth. Unlike many other members of the House of Habsburg, neither Maria Theresas parents nor her grandparents were closely related to each other, Maria Theresa was a serious and reserved child who enjoyed singing and archery. She was barred from riding by her father, but she would later learn the basics for the sake of her Hungarian coronation ceremony. The imperial family staged opera productions, often conducted by Charles VI and her education was overseen by Jesuits
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